Premiere Radio to Rush Affiliates: “Don’t Worry About the Commercials”

Premiere Networks has sent a memo to Rush Limbaugh syndicated radio affiliate stations that it has cancelled all national radio commercials for the Limbaugh show for two weeks. Here is the text of the memo sent to stations:

“We are suspending the requirement to run barter spots for two weeks, March 12th and March 19th, for our News/Talk affiliates only. “Please replace/re-traffic any Premiere barter spots immediately. Contractual requirements to run barter spots are being suspended for these two weeks only. Replace them with Lifelock and Lear Financial or a local spot of your choice. “This suspension does not apply to in-program commercial provided by Premiere within any of its live news/talk programming.”

According to a report from UPI, Premiere said, “This memo was sent to traffic managers of news/talk affiliates as part of Premiere’s overall strategy to update our processes and services to better meet our clients’ needs.” (read “damage control”) Meanwhile, the ThinkProgress political blog cited a separate Premiere memo Monday as saying nearly 100 previously unreported national advertisers have asked that their ads not be played on the show, bringing the total in the wake of Limbaugh’s now infamous “slut” controversy to 141.

The fallout and the backlash by advertisers continues following Limbaugh’s remarks about Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke, even after an apology. Limbaugh has incurred the wrath of his detractors before, but this is the first time Premiere has taken a step like this.